Night Sky Stories
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Sarai sails away from the Copper Isles in the middle of the night, and watches the stars. Sarai/Zaimid


**A/N:** Dedicated to teamfen/sarcastic rabbit, with thanks for the plotbunny that became this fanfiction. Yes, the story Sarai's thinking of is the Ramayana, but the stars bit is my own little addendum. Please read and review!

**Disclaimer:** TP owns Tor- the Copper Isles.

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The stars are very bright in the night sky.

They form the constellations that Sarai has known all her life, watching them on the bitterly cold nights at Tanair when she couldn't sleep, catching a glimpse of them out of a window in Rajmuat, always the same. They are the constellations of which stories are told. Even Aly, with her strange Tortallan tales -and is Aly really the common girl she claims to be, to speak Kyprish so well and to know all these tales of nobles?- told a story once of a small constellation called the Cat, and its life as a mortal companion to Alanna the Lioness. The stars are familiar, soothing points of light in the night, and Sarai has known them forever.

Soon they will be gone. In a few nights' time, she will look out of her window and see very different stars.

Sarai feels tears wanting to come to her eyes. No, she thinks, and stares fiercely up at the sky. It does not help: the sky is deep, deep blue, and Sarai finds herself comparing it to Dove's blue ink, liquid and jewel-coloured in the thick glass bottle.

Dove. A stab of pain goes through her heart, as surely and cleanly as her sword ran Bronau through not so very long ago. How can she leave Dove, little Dove, with her clever face and black eyes that know everything? How can she leave baby Petranne and proud little Elsren, how can she leave Winna? Winna, who was so gentle and kind and who loved Father so much.

Sarai leans on the ship's rail, staring out from the bow, over the black ocean parting in front of the ship's prow, and answers her own question with all the reasons she has to offer. Because they would ask me to stay behind. They would speak to me of duty- they would plead- they would reason- I cannot, I cannot stay behind, it is a prison, a prison, so many, so many liars, hypocrites, how can they stand it, how can they, I cannot stand by it, I cannot defend it, I will not have it, my people, they need me, I cannot help them- and half my blood is so cruel to them... Duty will not keep me from going mad, tied and helpless to defend them against luarin cruelty...

Her reasons seem so feeble, here above the whispering water and below the inky sky.

"How can luarin do that? How can they throw stones at others who are just like them?"

She does not realise she has spoken aloud until Zaimid responds, sliding warm arms around her waist and staring over her shoulder into the darkness. He smells like cinnamon, and she closes her eyes and leans her head back against him. "Because they truly believe that a difference of colour gives them the right to do so. Because they truly believe that such a difference makes them superior."

"It is disgusting," Sarai says fiercely, "disgusting."

Zaimid says nothing, but his arms tighten in sympathy.

Sarai watches the stars, and thinks of a story. Part of a much larger tale, little-known, a tiny fragment of a raka epic that Sarai always loved and Sarugani used to tell. A little of the story of Sita wife of Ram, who joined her husband in exile and was stolen away by a demon, to the island across the water where the demons lived. Where watching the stars was the only freedom the most beautiful woman in the world, wife of a hero, could have.

_Sita looked at the stars and she wished that she was far away... she whispered to them, "Free me, jewels of the sky, carry the message that I am here and I cannot escape to my lord far away, for all my jewels and beauty will not help me now." And the stars sparkled, and Sita cried bitter tears, for they were only stars and surely could not help her._

_But slowly she learnt to listen, in the stillness of the night when all things but she slept, and she realised that the stars sang. A soft, whistling, tuneful music, as beautiful as the stars themselves and the black sky. It comforted Sita, for the knowledge that there could be beauty even in the island over the water, and she cried no more._

"What are you thinking?" Zaimid says quietly eventually.

"I'm thinking of a story my mother used to tell me," she tells him. "Of Sita and the stars."

"Sita? Yes," Zaimid says, and she can hear the pleasure in his voice. "You told me of Sita. The most beautiful woman in the world." He pauses, and says thoughtfully: "As beautiful as you? I cannot believe it."

Laughing, she slaps lightly at his wrist. "Yes. More so, perhaps. She lived a long time ago, so nobody knows. And the stars... the stars made her feel at home."

"She chose her husband," Zaimid says thoughtfully, "from many suitors?"

"Yes," Sarai answers, wondering where he is taking this conversation. She loves how he can surprise her, how she can't always anticipate his next action. "Well, there was a great bow that belonged to a god that the man who wanted to marry her had to string and only Ram had the strength, but she decided she wanted him of all her suitors before he tried."

"Like you, beautiful," Zaimid says affectionately, kissing her cheek. "Or like the Empress Kalasin, Kaddar's wife. I think you will like her. She is very pretty, like you, but not so pretty as you at all."

"Queen Thayet and King Jonathan's daughter, yes?" Sarai feels a spark of interest. Perhaps she will have good friends in Carthak. "Tell me about her."

Zaimid chuckles. "Oh, she is a handful. Opinionated and clever, and she loves her freedom and riding. She drives Kaddar mad half the time, and the rest of the time he all but worships the ground she walks on. Neither of them can resist sniping at each other. It is hilarious to be around. I think you will like her, and I think she will like you."

"She sounds fun," Sarai says happily, and glancing at the stars, she thinks that she has found her own star-music. It smells like cinnamon and calls her 'beautiful'.

She will call her first son Mequen, she decides, filling with hope for the first time since she left Rajmuat, soothing and cool on the raw painful guilt of her abandoned family. She will name him after her father. She smiles, and closes her eyes again, and breathes in cinnamon. Zaimid will like that idea.


End file.
